EUFORD PHOENIX BLOG SITEhttps://eufordphoenix.wordpress.com
https://eufordphoenix.wordpress.comSat, 27 Jan 2018 03:11:29 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/3f9dbe2476fa8d4c8d26c96fbb33a910?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.pngEUFORD PHOENIX BLOG SITEhttps://eufordphoenix.wordpress.com
Transfiguration and Deathhttps://eufordphoenix.wordpress.com/2015/09/21/transfiguration-and-death/
Mon, 21 Sep 2015 08:39:19 +0000http://eufordphoenix.wordpress.com/?p=542EDWARD GIBBON, the great English historian, begins his “Decline and Fall” with a glowing portrait of the Roman Empire in the age of Augustus. The Empire “comprehended the fairest part of the earth”. Rome’s enemies were kept at bay by “ancient renown and disciplined valour”. Citizens “enjoyed and abused the advantages of wealth and luxury”. Alas, this happy state of affairs was not to last: the Empire already contained the seeds of its own destruction. Gibbon soon changed gear from celebrating triumphs to chronicling disasters.

Perhaps the history of the Western corporation will one day be written in much the same vein. Today’s corporate empires comprehend every corner of the earth. They battle their rivals with legions of highly trained managers. They keep local politicians in line with a promise of an investment here or a job as a consultant there. The biggest companies enjoy resources that have seldom been equalled; Apple, for instance, is sitting on a cash pile of more than $200 billion. And they provide their senior managers and leading investors with “wealth and luxury” that would have impressed even the most jaundiced Roman.

A new report by the McKinsey Global Institute provides some invaluable statistics for any future Gibbon, which MGI calculated by crunching data from nearly 30,000 firms across the world. Corporate profits more than tripled in 1980-2013, rising from 7.6% of global GDP to 10%, of which Western companies captured more than two-thirds. The after-tax profits of American firms are at their highest level as a share of national income since 1929.

Yet the men and women from McKinsey change gear as quickly as Gibbon. The golden age of the Western corporation, they argue, was the product of two benign developments: the globalisation of markets and, as a result, the reduction of costs. The global labour force has expanded by some 1.2 billion since 1980, with the new workers largely coming from emerging economies. Corporate-tax rates across the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, have fallen by as much as half in that period. And the price of most commodities is down in real terms.

Now a more difficult era is beginning. More than twice as many multinationals are operating today as in 1990, making for more competition. Margins are being squeezed and the volatility of profits is growing. The average variance in returns to capital for North American firms is more than 60% higher today than it was in 1965-1980. MGI predicts that corporate profits may fall from 10% of global GDP to about 8% in a decade’s time.

Two things in particular are shaking up the comfortable world of the old imperial multinationals. The first is the rise of emerging-market competitors. The share of Fortune500 companies based in emerging markets has increased from 5% in 1980-2000 to 26% today. These firms are expanding globally in much the same way as their predecessors from Japan and South Korea did before them. In the past decade the 50 largest emerging-world firms have doubled the proportion of their revenues coming from abroad, to 40%. Although the outlook for many emerging markets is more mixed than it was just a couple of years ago, troubles at home may push rising multinationals to globalise more rapidly.

The second factor is the rise of high-tech companies in both the West and the East. These firms have acquired large numbers of customers in the blink of an eye. Facebook boasts as many users each month as China has people: 1.4 billion. Tech giants can use their networks of big data centres rapidly to colonise incumbents’ territories; China’s e-commerce giants Alibaba, Tencent and JD.com are doing this in financial services. Such firms can also provide smaller companies with a low-cost launching pad that allows them to compete in the global market.

MGI does not dwell on it, but the political environment is also becoming more hostile. Populists on both the left and the right rage against corporate greed. In America, presidential hopefuls Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump both criticise companies for exploiting tax loopholes. Even middle-of-the-road politicians are sounding a more anti-corporate note. Angela Merkel introduced Germany’s first minimum wage in 2014; and in Britain David Cameron is phasing in a “living wage”. Companies may find themselves under pressure to “give back” to wider society.

How can Western companies navigate these threats to their rule? MGI advises them to focus on the one realm where they continue to have a comparative advantage—the realm of ideas. Many companies in labour- and capital-intensive industries have been slaughtered by foreign competitors, whereas idea-intensive firms—not just companies in obvious markets such as the media, finance and pharmaceuticals, but in areas such as logistics and luxury cars—continue to flourish. The “idea sector”, as MGI defines it, accounts for 31% of profits generated by Western companies, compared with 17% in 1999.

Capitalist redemption

The relative decline of the Western corporation could also lead to a rethinking of some of the long-standing assumptions about what makes for a successful business. Public companies may lose ground to other types of firm: in America the number of firms listed on stock exchanges has fallen from 8,025 in 1996 to about half that number now. The cult of quarterly earnings may lose more of its following. A striking number of the new corporate champions have dominant owners in the form of powerful founders. They are willing to eschew short-term results in order to build a durable business, such as Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook, the Mahindras and other assiduous families in India, and private-equity firms. Gibbon’s great work was a tale of decline and fall, as classical civilisation gave way to barbarism and self-indulgence. With luck, the tale of the relative decline of the Western corporation will also be a tale of the reinvention of capitalism as new forms of companies arise to seize opportunities from the old.

]]>eufordphoenixHUMAN INTELLIGENCE…………https://eufordphoenix.wordpress.com/2014/10/25/human-intelligence/
Sat, 25 Oct 2014 05:44:16 +0000http://eufordphoenix.wordpress.com/?p=523It’s not hard to see why. Advances in robotics and artificial intelligence are bringing robots into more and more workplaces.

Autonomous vehicles now in development by just about every major automaker threaten the jobs of truckers and cabbies.There’s even a robotic burger flipper in the works. The website ofMomentum Machines boasts that its slicing, grinding, frying robot can do “everything employees can do except better”, and that it will “democratize access to high-quality food, making it available to the masses”.

All of which begs the question: will there be anyone left who can afford those better burgers, or will everyone be out of work? And what the hell are we supposed to do about the inevitable rise of the machines….

]]>eufordphoenixBACK OF THE DARK THERE WAS A SILENT NIGHT……..https://eufordphoenix.wordpress.com/2014/10/24/back-of-the-dark-there-was-a-silent-night/
Fri, 24 Oct 2014 16:18:20 +0000http://eufordphoenix.wordpress.com/?p=520I have been one acquainted with the night sounds grreat and the back of the evening silent night…….

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore; Turn whereso’er I may, By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more. GREAT CREATION OF THE NIGHT SKY HIGH………….

]]>eufordphoenixHONESTLY……https://eufordphoenix.wordpress.com/2014/09/03/honestly/
Wed, 03 Sep 2014 04:54:13 +0000http://eufordphoenix.wordpress.com/2014/09/03/honestly/when we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my natur……
]]>eufordphoenixsunrise sunsethttps://eufordphoenix.wordpress.com/2013/10/19/sunrise-sunset/
Sat, 19 Oct 2013 16:01:12 +0000http://eufordphoenix.wordpress.com/?p=477Astronomically, sunrise occurs for only an instant: the moment at which the upper limb of the Sun appears tangent to the horizon.However, the term sunrise commonly refers to periods of time both before and after this point:

The timing of sunrise varies throughout the year and is also affected by the viewer’s longitude and latitude, altitude, and time zone. These changes are driven by the axial tilt of Earth, daily rotation of the Earth, the planet’s movement in its annual elliptical orbit around the Sun, and the Earth and Moon’s paired revolutions around each other. The analemma can be used to make approximate predictions of the time of sunrise.

RealTalk is a compelling and different. RealTalk is a way of communicating that elevates your thinking, ignites and uplifts your dreams and desires and helps you to become more authentic, self-directed, passionately engaged and alive in your life and leadership relationships.

“RealTalk is an amazing process that, once learned, will transform your conversations and grow you into a person who puts words into action! Eight simple questions properly asked change understanding, change relationships and change lives – all for the better. I know because I am experiencing the RealLife effect of having RealTalks with Rashmi Malhotra, one of the incredible women on the RealTalk team. If you want to be challenged to grow and think, change and move ahead, learn how to RealTalk like I did. You will be inspired to greater things.”

]]>eufordphoenixCONFUSED?https://eufordphoenix.wordpress.com/2013/10/12/confused/
Sat, 12 Oct 2013 12:35:14 +0000http://eufordphoenix.wordpress.com/?p=456 Withhold the answers from yourself. We’ve heard a lot lately about the benefits of experiencing and overcoming failure. One way to get these benefits is to set things up so that you’re sure to fail that people who try solving math problems in this way don’t come up with the right answer—but they do generate a lot of ideas about the nature of the problems and about what potential solutions would look like, leading them to perform better on such problems in the future. This “productive failure,” and you can implement it in your own learning by allowing yourself to struggle with a problem for a while before seeking help or information.

Expose yourself to confusing material.

]]>16.231487 120.48019416.231487120.480194eufordphoenixWHAT CAN YOU SEE WHEN YOU CLOSE YOUR EYES?https://eufordphoenix.wordpress.com/2013/10/08/what-can-you-see-when-you-close-your-eyes/
Tue, 08 Oct 2013 13:54:32 +0000http://eufordphoenix.wordpress.com/?p=439You can close your eyes the things you don’t want to see, but you can’t

close your heart to the things you don’t want to feel.”Maybe I’m weird, but over my many years I’ve spent some time looking at the designs I see when I close my eyes or rub them when they are closed. Lots of shapes geometric and different colors i can see.

Recently I put my hands over my eyes after being in the sun and I saw black with a bluish glow. I thought it would be cool to try and recreate it. The problem with this is that what you see is indestinct and really hard to describe. Maybe we really aren’t ‘seeing’ but rather sensing the cones and receptors in the eye. Don’t know but just for that reason it makes a neat challenge. Maybe you all ‘see’ better than I do. Am curious to see what you do see.
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Matthew 5:43-48

Love YOUR Enemies

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?47 And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.